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The largest internet company in 2030? This prediction will probably surprise you

Image: REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

Thirty years ago, it
was a big deal when schools got their first computers. Today, it's a big deal
when students get their own laptops.

According to futurist
Thomas Frey, in 14 years it'll be a big deal when students learn from robot
teachers over the internet.

It's not just because
the technology will be that sophisticated, Frey says, but because the company
responsible for it will be the largest of its kind.

"I've been
predicting that by 2030 the largest company on the internet is going to be an
education-based company that we haven't heard of yet," Frey, the senior
futurist at the DaVinci Institute think tank, tells Business Insider.

"Nobody has
quite cracked the code for the future of education," Frey contends.

His vision for 2030
includes a massively enhanced version of today's open online courses — the kind
of instruction you may find with Khan Academy, Coursera, or MIT OpenCourseWare.
Only, the instructors won't be humans beamed through videos. They'll be bots,
and they'll be smart enough to personalize each lesson plan to the child sitting
in front of the screen.

Frey suspects that
kind of efficiency will allow students to learn at much faster rates than if
they had to compete with 19 other students for the teacher's attention.
Students will breeze through their material at four or 10 times the speed,
perhaps completing an undergraduate education in less than half a year.

"It learns what
your proclivities are, it learns what your idiosyncrasies are," he
explains. "It learns what your interests are, your reference points. And
it figures out how to teach you in a faster and faster way over time."

He uses the example
of Google's DeepMind learning to play the Atari video game
"Breakout." Not only did it quickly pick up on the rules, but within
a half hour it figured out a way to achieve incredibly high scores — all with
little human input.

Machine learning will
accelerate in a similar fashion in the education space, Frey says. Online bots
will pick up on a student's strengths and weaknesses and use a series of
algorithms to tailor the lessons accordingly. Research suggests this
personalized method is among the most effective at raising kids' overall
achievement.

Frey doesn't go so
far as to argue education bots will replace traditional schooling outright. He
sees them more as a supplement, perhaps as a kind of tutor. If a child
struggles with algebra, a bot may be able to offer some help during homework
time or over the weekend.

It's up for debate
whether AI can master the subtleties of language, thought, and reason all
within the next 14 years. One of the greatest hurdles for machine learning is
grasping social interactions. Many AI systems today are still less capable (cognitively
speaking) than a 6-year-old.

Frey trusts 14 years
isn't too generous a timeline for the technology to ramp up, given how quickly
technology innovation builds on itself. The internet was just beginning to
enter a lot of people's homes 14 years ago, in 2002. But by 2007 people were
already surfing the Web on their iPhones, and today the internet is almost
omnipresent in daily life.

Frey predicts that
artificial intelligence will have the same trajectory in the education space.
By 2030, DeepMind's ability to master "Breakout" could seem as quaint
as dial-up modems do today, and what seemed like a massive library of online
content in 2016 could look to future students like a skimpy collection that
hardly does anything.

Written by Chris Weller, Ideas
Reporter, Business Insider

This article is published in
collaboration with Business Insider.

The views expressed in this article are those
of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.